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The xxxHolic series was nice, but I felt it was hampered by the episodic format (I wrote a review for that too, if you're interested for some reason). The movie however, is absolutely fantastic. It was long enough to adequetely flesh out the story (the atmosphere in particular was awesome and creepy), and, as a movie, the production values were high enough so that the animation consistantly impressed me (the backgrounds are stunning and the characters move in a slightly gawky- though very smooth- way that I feel complements their character designs perfectly).
It isn't neccesary to have seen the series in... See full review

StoryYou are Umasou follows the practice of creating family films that, while ostensibly for children, make their protagonist go through so much you may start to wonder about the intended demographic. You know the type- they're filled with cutesy animal protagonists and you go into them expecting a fun mindless romp, but by the end you're bawling your eyes out because they're so depressing (The Lion King and ... See full review

STORY
Kemono no Souja Erin's first twenty or so episodes are offensively slow-paced. This, combined with the fact that it's a children's show, will probably turn a lot of people off, which is a shame.
Even though the first two arcs of Erin were slow, they weren't needlessly so. The pacing eases the audience into Erin's world, while introducing the characters and customs at a pace the target demographic could keep up with. As a fantasy series, a lot of background information is required to "get" the world, and Erin does a wonderful job at that (the only thing I wish had been explored more... See full review

When I first started Princess Mononoke, I really wasn't planning on enjoying it. Studio Ghibli films have a tendency to bore me to tears, and environmental films fill me with rage and an irrepressible urge to chop down forests and strangle vegetables (I guess I'm just contrary). So the prospect of an environmental film from Studio Ghibli makes me cringe (I had a terrible experience with Nausicaä). But my roommate was watching it, so I broke down and accompanied her. And was pleasantly surprised. It was gorgeous, and hardly made me angry at all! (Probably due to the "human" side and... See full review

I have two main issues with slice-of-life shows: Most have extremely boring/over-used settings (some sort of school or a house/neighborhood, but always in upper middle-class, modern-day Japan), and have a cast almost exclusively made up of cute teenaged girls. Because of this, I find most slice-of-lifes stagnant and/or derivative.So-Ra-No-Wo-To fixes the first issue. The setting was by far my favorite aspect of the series. It was imaginative, richly-detailed, well thought-out, and most importantly wasn't set in the present or in Japan. The in-show culture was just a giant hodge-podge of existing cultures... See full review

I hate long episodic series. Twelve or so episodes like that are great, but when it starts getting into the twenties, I start cringing. Sitting through so many episodes with absolutely no plot progression at all seems like a complete waste of time. So that being said, it's remarkable how much I managed to enjoy xxxHolic.The CHARACTERS were completely charming, despite sounding like broken records half the time. Yuuko was always getting drunk, Maru and Moro were always repeating everyone, Himawari was always telling Watanuki "what good friends you and Doumeki are!", et cetera. Everyone had their... See full review

This movie didn't make me cry, which is usually how I determine how much I like these sorts of things. So it loses some points from that. I've also heard some people critique this movie for being 'rambly and unfocused', which, okay, it totally was. It covers 13~ years and kind of just keeps going. But I'd consider it a bildingsroman of sorts, and those are always pretty rambly so I wasn't bothered by it overmuch.
The movie starts off with Hana (the mother character) and the ~mysterious~ werewolf man falling in love, though why they decided to do so wasn't given much attention. Their relationship kind of... See full review

StoryMahou shoujo has become a stagnant genre, full of over-used cliches, transformation sequences, and shallow characterization. It seems like lately the only way for a mahou shoujo to succeed is to parody or viciously subvert the genre (see: Madoka). Heartcatch Precure breathes some life into the archetypical formula by showing why these things became tropes in the first place: if... See full review

StoryKiki’s Delivery Service is, first and foremost, a children’s film. From
the eighties. Also it’s a coming-of-age story, and unless those are done
reeeeeeeally well, they can induce a hard-core snooze-fest. But hot
damn, it eschewed all these possible pitfalls, and became one of the
only Miyazaki films I actively like.
The film pulls off its slice-of-life portions stunningly, to the point
where it becomes easy to overlook all the happy coincidences that ... See full review

This is the first draft for one of my site reviews, the edited version of which can be found HERE. I didn't want to erase this version because people have commented on it, which I like. :3
Well hot damn, another Miyazaki film that I can appreciate (and not even in that begrudging “well, I suppose it’s a quality film, but golly it put me to sleep faster than something that puts me to sleep pretty fast” way).
Story-6
Kiki’s Delivery Service is, first and foremost, a children’s film. From the eighties. Also it’s a... See full review

StoryI have fond memories of Dumas’s The Count of Monte Cristo from when I read it in middle school, so I started watching Gankutsuou hoping for the best.
The anime delivers an interesting idiosyncrasy by incorporating sci-fi elements like space travel, alien races, and futuristic technologies into the 19th century plot and rococo aesthetic. Additionally, the condensing of nearly 1500 pages of novel down to 26 episodes of animation removed many of the less frenetic portions, allowing the narrative to... See full review

Hot damn, it's a slice-of-life that isn't about teenagers!
Unfortunately, it still couldn't manage to avoid many of the clichés that plague high-school shows: cheesy drama, the obligatory fanservice episode, and (worst of all) the romance between painfully-awkward-boy and unrealistically-dense-girl. Despite these shortcomings, Hanamaru Kindergarden was a pretty cute show, and really funny when it was focusing on comedy (which, thankfully, was most of the time). The middle three/four episodes were pretty weak (Tsuchi's sister is hella obnoxious), but it managed to bounce back to the humor and... See full review

So... many... bishounen...And really, that's the only thing that separates Pandora Hearts from all the other shows ever: the sheer amount of potential yaoi shipping between the bishounen-heavy cast. Quite a bit of screen-time is spent with them fawning over each other, clutching at each other's clothing, watching each other sleep, and freaking out if they think one of them has kissed (gasp!) a girl. Unfortunately, I couldn't muster the fangirlishness needed to enjoy any of this.ANIMATION/CHARACTERS (because I don't feel like commenting on the rest):I didn't really like it. In general, it was too muted. Yes... See full review

DON'T WATCH THIS ALL AT ONE TIME!
That should be fairly obvious for this kind of show, but I'm reminding you just in case. It's also especially applicable for this show, as most of the jokes are about the same subject (art), so if you watch too many episodes back-to-back, they'd probably start running together. Which is unfortunate because I think GA did a really good job at not repeating jokes. Sure, some of them are similar (like I said, they're all about art), but actual repetition is extremely rare, thanks to the themed episodes.
I also wouldn't recommend this series if you aren't interested in art... See full review

STORYUgh. I'll break this up into three parts.THE BEGINNING: At the start, Soul Eater is a pretty fun show. It's funny, the characters are refreshing, it doesn't take itself too seriously (the main downfall of most of these types of shows), and I heartily enjoyed it. The main problem with this section, is that there wasn't really any plot. The plot took at least ten or so episodes to actually get going. That's just way too long, but considering the alternative, I would have prefered that the plot never got started. That leads me to...THE MIDDLE: Shortly after the story actually starts (somewhere in the mid... See full review

This was actually fairly good for a children's film.Yes, it it was sort of generic and came complete with a cheesy moral at the end, but it was pretty well-animated, the cast was likeable, and the plot got pretty sad/"Gah! That's awful!" for a story aimed at children. It also had a few really cute little touches in the characters, like when Wataru crossed the street, his gait was weird because he was taking care to only step on the white bars, and how his mother flipped over the divorce papers when he walked in the room. Also, the animals in the fantasy realm were adorable! There were these things... See full review

Story'Person in a Strange Land' series are pretty stupid. Having said that, Strange Dawn is one of the least cliché of these that I've come across. In most stories of this genre, our intrepid protagonist gets whisked away to a fantastical land. Upon arriving, they are given magical powers, and discover that the first person they chanced upon was the benevolent, handsome (and single!) prince who has fallen desperately in love with them. What luck! Or... See full review

Meh.
Maetel Legend arbitrarily decided that Maetel and Emeraldas are sisters, which was baffling and unnecessary (or am I missing something?). It also got rid of any shred of subtlety present in Leiji Matsumoto's earlier library, replacing it with "Now that I am a robot, I am PURE EVIL!"
The art is slick, yet maintains most of its 'old school' charm- though I'll posit that the ladies were foxier in th 70s.
I don't recommend this for newcomers to the franchise, but if you're already a fan of the Leijiverse this is a decent watch (and short!). There's some effective body horror, and origin... See full review

My only experiences with Studio Ghibli up to this point have been with Miyazaki's films, so I picked one at random, and this is what I got.STORYOcean Waves is very realistic. It's a story about normal people living their normal lives. It's focused on problems that seem very petty compared to most anime, whose plots contain sweeping melodrama and constant twists and turns, and thus is rather more relatable, for what that's worth. Adding to the realism are things that wouldn't normally be included in an anime (a girl mentions her period, there's a brief scene of a few of the teenaged characters drinking), as... See full review

In the beginning, King of Thorn was excellent. The animation is fantastic (even the occasional lapses into animating the characters in CG are forgivable), I really enjoyed how the premise was explained (widespread panic caused by the 'Medusa' virus with a 100% fatality rate), and where it looked like the story was headed (post-apocalyptic survival/horror). However, somewhere along the line it fell apart.
At one point during the movie I thought to myself "That was much better than I expected, I wonder how they're going to tie this up" (i.e.- I thought it must be almost done), and then noticed that... See full review

StorySenkou no Night Raid relies on the ‘random stories in the first half, actual plot in the second’ formula, which, in my opinion, hardly ever works. The whiplash-inducing tonal shifts usually do their series a disservice, and this one is no exception.
The beginning section wastes time on inane plot points, such as the characters photographing food for seven minutes, immediately followed by an equally ridiculous scene in which the two protagonists chase a cat around the city for a while. This took up an entire... See full review

StoryYumeiro Patissiere embraces every shoujo cliché in the book- A clumsy yet hardworking girl with a quaint dream arrives at an ornate boarding school in the middle of a forest. She encounters prodigies, "princely" boys whose every blink and smile are accompanied by sparkles and roses, jealous Queen Bees, and fairies. It's a near carbon-copy of every shoujo series out there, which is fine if you're accustomed to tripe.
To its credit, the series... See full review

STORY
Upon light perusal, the story is pretty cute. A little boring, but nothing terrible. It's when you start thinking about what's happening (even just a teensy-tiny bit), that everything falls apart at the seams. What the dickens is happening and why?
How were Nagisa and Tomoya able to meet Fuuko in the first place? Scratch that, absolutely nothing in Fuuko's arch makes any sense at all. Nothing. When I wasn't rolling my eyes or staring dumbfounded at the screen, I was pretty impressed by this accomplishment.
How is Kotomi able to survive? Her financial situation is nonexistant. Why don't anyone's... See full review

OVERALLOh, Requiem from the Darkness, you were at the top of my "Want to Watch" list for so long, building up my expectations, only to disapoint me later...Everything about the series indicated that I would love it. Bizarre art style? Arc-based horror series? I have a very good track record with both. But Requiem from the Darkness was quite possibly the most disapointing thing I've watched thus far (probably because my expectations were high, but that's definitely not entirely the case). Though, it was chock-full of unintentional humor, due to some of the ridiculous gore/random... See full review

StoryAt first glance, Full Moon wo Sagashite's story shows great potential. Two shinigami tell an adolescent girl with throat cancer that she has a mere year left to live. Such a dark premise seems in complete contrast to the fluffy drivel that shoujo series usually spew out by the boat-load. Perhaps this can rise above the insubstantial and generic mass? Tch. Fat chance. Full Moon’s initial intrigue quickly gives way to a festering pile of nothing whose... See full review

3/10 story

4/10 animation

3/10 sound

2/10 characters

2.5/10 overall

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